» Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:04 pm Prologue
*Cue Ron Perlman's manly narrator's voice*
Vault Forty-Six. Located on the outskirts of New York City. Built to be the most bland of the vaults. The walls were painted sickly yellow and green. The Pip-Boys were made to look like a Robco. Unified OS computer. The lights were augmented to give off a dull glare, as if one is in a school. The living quarters are completely white with a table in the middle, chairs, a couch and a bed. The people were given a grey sludge as a nutrient supplement their entire lives. Other than this, Vault Forty-Six was an ordinary vault. Was. One hundred and ninety years after the vault's sealing, a mysterious virus had began killing off residents and by two hundred years after sealing, only six were left immune and alive. They debated of what to do, four saying they stay and two saying they leave and after one night of violent murder, the two in favour of leaving, took supplies, and left without looking back. One of the two survivors took his own life shortly after the excursion leaving the the last survivor of Vault Forty-Six on his very own. In a world where danger is daily life, he will have to scraqe by with what little he is given.
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Entry One
Breathing.
It approaches... But from where?
Left? No. Right? No. Not in front of me.
Where?
Crap. Above me. Gotta get away... Take a peak...
Dangling tentacle... grabber? No... Jumper. Take aim... Breathe in and breathe out...
Got it!
Name's John Willman. Not much to say about myself. Haven't seen one living human since I escaped that hell-hole of a vault. What's a Grabber? And a Jumper? Mutated animals. New York's full of 'em. The closer to that power plant you get, the more of them there are. They get more hideous, too. A Grabber is a Squid thrown into a vat of FEV and a Jumper is a Frog thrown into a vat of FEV. They all come from that power plant. That power plant was a Vault-Tec testing facility in disguise. They threw individual creatures into a vat of FEV, let them float around in it, and out came a mutated version. All mutations are slightly different but can be generalised. Everything is bloody massive. Jumpers all have sharp teeth, long tongues and ridiculous jumping abilty hence the nickname. Grabbers are tentacled masses of flesh and gnashing mouthes. You can imagine what they do if they get you. You don't want to be caught by either one. Oh? How do I know the Vault-Tec lab information? I attempted to go scavving there once. The terminal systems are still working. The... The THINGS I saw there, though... Let's just say I'm not going back anytime soon. Anyway, the ammo that I'd burn through isn't worth it. Hell, I'm rationing ammo as it is. I have to move almost every night. I've been going strong for two years now since the Vault incident, I can't give up now.
...
There's not a day that goes by that I don't wonder if we could've left the vault without the killing. I was seventeen then. I was naive. The four were right. These ruins are no place to live. Roger had me convinced, though. He had told me that out in the wastes, we'd be free. He was my best friend. I never questioned him. I loved him like a brother. We were there for eachother when the virus killed both of our families. The night we left, he woke me up, telling me that we were leaving. He gave me a pistol and some ammo, told me that we would be shot on sight if any of the other four were to see us. I, of course, believed him. Fetly was on guard duty. From what I remember, I think he was raising his arm to wave a hello to me, but thinking that he wanted me dead, I shot and killed him. Didn't think twice about it at the time. Probably didn't care... One thing I try hard to forget is what state the other three were left in when Roger walked out of the room with a dripping knife. Blood spattered all over the walls. Indistinct and bloody blobs of flesh laying all over the floor in pools of blood. The dismembered heads propped up in a line on a table in the corner. It was horrifying. I looked to Roger. He just said, "Let's go" in a flat tone. It chilled me to the bones. Occasionally I'll hear it in a dream... Days after we leave, he commits suicide. It made as much sense to me as it does now. None at all. In the two days we were taveling the New York ruins, he had said nothing. I was left puzzled and confused at his death. Nonetheless, he is buried by a statue of puzzled looking man in a graveyard just outside the city. I figured as he was very confusing at and near his death, the puzzled statue was fitting.
I still miss them all...
...
I'm going to go to that armoury I saw awhile back. I'm gonna need a good night's sleep. It's very close to the plant...
I awoke with a sense of purpose in the morning. I'm determined. I'm putting everything I have into this. The moral in this one-man army was high. Nothing shall stop me. Nothing. Made it to the armoury... Giant Radscorpions. Right. Far left. Just ahead. Usual drill... Crap! Spotted! Luckily only one... This one's fast. It attempts a sting... I manage a dodge... Crap, grabbed my gun! Combat knife, gotta get it out... There... Here we go. Attempts another sting... And pinch... I dive to attack as the thing's stinger hits something behind me... Leg. Exploding. With. Pain. Got me... Damnit, stung... Huh? Where'd the... Radscorpian go? No matter, my vision's fading. I'm going to get nawed on soon. Wait... A humanoid figure? Probaby a Feral...
Blackness.
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Entry Two
I awoke what felt like forever later. My body was stiff... I felt pain? In my leg... I'm alive! A distant voice, "Hey, don't get up too fast or you'll get sick"... I looked around... My visions blurry... Glowing... A Glowing One! No weapons... Gotta find a weapon! "Calm down!" he said. Said? "You can speak english? You aren't Feral?" I asked. "No, no I'm not. I'm a rare type of Ghoul, but I'm not Feral," I lay down in relief. "I used radiation to heal you and get rid of that poison, you know. Little trick I learned awhile ago. However, you're technically mutated now. Just lettin' you know." he said. "Ah I don't care about that. I was running out of supplies anyway... Where are we?" I asked. "An old armoury. I'm afraid I'm almost in your low supplies predicament, friend." Geez, this was a waste... I put everything into this mission... And it turns out someone else is using it and I'm lucky to be alive. "What's your name, good man?" He asked in good tones. Does he ever have a heavy english accent...
"Call me John. Last names are useless out here. Yours?"
"Williams. My father's name." Father? He here too?"
"Nah, he just died from the radiation. Didn't get Ghoulified like me."
"Sorry to hear that. I'm the last person alive from my vault. I can sympathize."
"Vault, eh?" He gets up. "That explains that." He said, pointing to my Vault Forty-Six Jumpsuit.
"Ah, yes... I wouldn't want to go back there, though. Too many... Memories..." I said sadly.
"Ah, memories. We're all plagued." He replied.
A couple hours later, when I was feeling better, he asked if I'd like to assist him in hunting for dinner. I excepted. He brought me to a room deep in the armoury. This room... Geez, he certainly wasn't running out of guns, The walls were covered! My old hunting rifle was nothing compared to this! I took a Desert Eagle as a side-arm and a Laser Rifle as main. "You sure you wanna bring that? The lasers stick out like a sore thumb." He asked. "You glow bright green." I replied. "True, true. And it does cook the flesh a bit... Anyway, let me warn you about a new type of mutation I've been seeing lately, I call it a Spiker. It's a mutated variant of pre-war Armadillo. Used to be harmless. Not any more. If you see what looks like a giant ball of fast-moving razor blades, holler and we're getting out of there. Clear?" He said warningly.
"Clear, do they make distinctive noises?"
"Clicking and scraping sounds."
"Okay, let's go."
"Wait one second, If we see one... Actually, if we see one, let's... Take it down. I do wonder how resiliant they are."
"Alrighty then, let's do it!"
It's now night. Williams is wearing an all black suit with his hand exposed so that I don't lose sight of him. I'm wearing Combat Armour. This, though supposed to be light, is freakin' heavy. I can't imagine Power Armour. Anyway, we're in a place that I've never been before. The building are more decrepit here. You can hear crumbling in the distance... The ground is smooth... I can't see the moon. "Movement, over there." I pointed over to a fence. "From the size it's either mole rat or a dog..." Williams said. We approach it to investigate... Skin-like wings. It's a Screamer, a mutated bat that has lost flight for size, toughness and a loud, high-pitched screech. One of the worst things to encounter when hunting. "Shoot it!" Williams yelled. It heard him, Damnit! My ears are violated with the loudest, most shrill pitch I've ever heard. I take the laser rifle and fire three times, missing twice because of the distraction and then hitting the mark. I felt like everything in the world had heard us. We wait holding our breath...
Silence.
And then...
Scraping.
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Entry Three
It stood at least twelve metres tall, the spikes adding four to it's height. It had no lips, nothing to conceal it's gleaming white teeth. It wasn't saliva making them glean either. It had the most striking white, glowing eyes that you knew you wouldn't want looking in your direction. It had large feet reminding me of... Something I saw in a book back in the vault... An elephant, I think it was called. This was no longer an armadillo, this was a nightmare vaguely resembling an armadillo.
"You sure you wanna do this?" I asked.
"Don't be intimidated, dear boy, he's likely got a soft under-belly. We roll a plasma grenade under and we kill him." Williams replied.
"I really hope you're right..."
We crept slowly towards the creature. I don't know about Williams but my heart was pounding hard. The spikes honestly didn't help my lack of wanting to be near it. I heard a growl behind me. A dog. Wonderful. I look to the Spiker just in time to dive out of the way. It had curled up, rolled ridiculously fast and attacked the dog. The dog's parts were spread in a five metre area. That could've been me. "NOW!" Yelled Williams, and we through the grenades under the beast. They went off... It lay motionless... "Y'think it's dead?" Williams asked. And suddenly, it jumped upward, curled into it's ball and rocketed toward Williams. Missed. I fired at it a couple times. Useless...
Suddenly the ground rumbled... For a second, I thought it was an earthquake... Something massive burst out of the ground, where the spiker once was, I assume it was eaten. It turned back toward the ground and went back underground. We stood in awe. Nothing could explain what we just saw. Nothing could explain the two massive holes left by... whatever that was.
When we got back to the armoury, Williams was frantic. "This... I... We have to get out of New York City..."
"We just have to be more careful is all." I said in an attempt to calm him down.
"You don't understand, John, this... this thing is just the first! We have to get out of here!"
"How do you know? If all mutations are different, we're unlikely to encounter something else like this."
"I haven't told you my story, have I? In all this excitement I didn't even... You have to know... I should've told you..."
"Does it concern my very life?"
"It may very well."
"Alright. Go."
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Entry Four
I was a scientist for Vault Tec European Branch. That went well. 'Bout two years before the war, I had to move from my home in the European Commonwealth. It's been so long, I can't even remember where that home was. Anyway, despite leaving home to be stationed in some random facility in a land of fascists, America wasn't too popular back then, I was going to work alongside my Father who had been stationed there a year before. He was brilliant, that man. In my opinion, on par with Stanislaus Braun, a well-known pre-war scientist. This facility was, on the surface, just another one of Vault Tec's offices. But, if you go deeper, it's a testing area for FEV meant to churn out super-soldiers via 'evolved' animals. You know where this facility is. I can remember when I arrived there, I thought it was remarkable. Everyone was competent. Everyone was in good moods all the time. Hell, I even got along with the boss. And the experiments. Had I known how they would be today, I would've attempted to destroy or stop them. But, of course, I believed all the rubbish about Vault Tec being pioneers of the future.
The last week before the war is what you need to be concerned with, however.
Monday had started out a strange day. The subjects had died en masse, save a few creatures. To be specific, we had at least five hundred exposed creatures that had survived the first exposure. We were left with one hundred five. We had no idea what caused it... We investigated and could not find the source. We detected heavy amounts of radiation in the testing chambers, but subjects mutated by FEV should be immune to radiation. On Tuesday, unrest was in the air. An employee had mutated. Outside the testing chambers. We were all paranoid. One such person had a nervous break-down in a conference about recent events, saying that "God was punishing us for taking his role." He then proceeded to yell "Repent!, Repent!" and strangled my superior. He was escorted forcefully out by security.
He died later that day.
On Wednesday, we found out what was happening. As it turns out, someone from Vault Tec itself had tampered with the FEV strains. They made the subjects increasingly vulnerable to radiation. In addition, the mutated person had FEV injected into him. A small punture mark on the skin above the carotid artery evidenced this. The murdering crazy was also exposed to FEV. However, his body wasn't compatible with FEV, so he just died. My Father was unable to get it off his mind. Who had done this? Who was this depraved? On Thursday, several employees had called in sick. My Father and I were desperately searching for answers. Then, after pacing the entire facility, I had come across a hallway that, in my entire two years here, I hadn't ever gone down. It looked like a dead end to me. I had asked my Father to come with me. We went down the hallway. We found a door leading to some very long stairs that lead down undeground. What we saw in the massive room before us was... almost unexplainable. A massive vat of FEV with a large shadow in the murky liquid evidencing an inhabitant of the vat. We stood in awe.
There was a large terminal near the vat. I hacked in to see what this was. We found an entire archive on it.
Subject Omega is a creature built to control vast amounts of electronics
in one area via electromagnetic resonance. We have selected a specimen
of blue whale, earth worm and human to be genetically spliced together to
create the first Bio-computing device the world has known.
And we read on to find out that the radiation and sick or mutated employees were Vault Tec testing it's control. Vault Tec was controlling this thing. I knew we had to get out of the facility. As I looked up from the terminal I saw a horrifyingly distorted human face. The creature was looking at us. We stared in horrified silence. I finally tore my eyes away from the thing. We forgot about everything and simply ran out of the facility.
Outside there was chaos. On every street and road there was a traffic jam. In the distance, I saw a large, gray, billowing mushroom cloud. In the distance there was a wave of fire rushing forward in our direction. There was an open manhole a couple metres ahead of us. We went into the sewers. We hid in a maintenance room to wait it out. Suddenly, there was an explosive "BANG!", then my body felt like it was on fire, but my skin was cold to touch. I looked to my Father. He rasped, "I love you, son." and limply crumpled onto the floor.
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Entry Five
I'll tell ya, the story certainly explained a lot. We really did need to get out of New York. I can only assume that "Subject Omega" is aware of our presence. If it can control electronics via electromagnetism, it likely can detect the electric pulses that occur within a man's brain to control the human body. I looked to Williams. He looked emotionally tired. "You look like you've been wanting to get this out for a long time." I said. "You've no idea." Williams replied, fatigued. "I... thought the thing would've died by now. Or at least have gone elsewhere."
"I'm guessing that the very creature itself isn't just one of the reasons we should leave?" I asked.
"Correct. A lot of New York's power grid is extremely unstable around any form of magnetism. If it were to somehow resurrect the entire thing, this place would be extremely unstable. Coupled with the abundant amount of fusion generators in a large city like this... That thing could obliterate much of the east coast, if left alone." Williams replied knowledgeably.
That was something that made me think. I could leave New York, possibly get blown up or possibly survive and die, like millions before me, to the sheer harshness of the wastes when I could have saved hundreds of people. I might aswell die a murderer. And I would've anyway. I was an idiot back at that vault... I should have asked questions first. Fetly didn't need to die. I could avenge that murder... Save lives...
"You know what? You can leave. I'm destroying this monster." I said with determination.
"You might not be saving anyone. You might only save one person. Hell, there's probably no one alive up in the territories of Ronto. DC was probably obliterated. There's likely no one in the wastes around DC either." Williams replied cynically. "You might only be killing yourself."
"I'll take that risk. Now, before you leave, do you know how to make a bomb? I'd appreciate it if you told me how to create one." I asked.
Williams shook his head. "We've only known eachother a day and a half and we've been through enough together to bicker like old friends. I'm starting to miss solitude. No matter. Can't let an amateur possibly blow us all to oblivion. You get me the parts and I'll build your bomb and help you install it wherever you want it installed. To be honest though, assuming the Omega lives at the facility is a pretty big assumption. The bomb won't be very... light. If it turns out it roams New York, this'll all be a waste." Williams lamented.
"If there's anything human left in it, despite being part worm and part fish, it should still be attached to the place of it's birth... I do appreciate this, you know." I said.
"Right, well, do you know of any place where we can find some raw explosives? Preferably C4?" Williams questioned.
"We have C4 back at the vault that we used for expanding the vault... It's probably still there." I answered.
"Looks like you're going to be visiting home soon!"
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Entry Six
I left for Vault Forty-Six the next day, refreshed and full of a good breakfast. Today was going to be eventful. According to my pip-boy, it was Eighty-Six degrees celsius, so it certainly was going to be a hot day. There wouldn't be many mutations out today. Way too hot. If I didn't have a reason to be out, I'd be inside too.
On the way there, I found a Yao Guai laying down and panting. I approached it. I was armed, so I was sure I could take it if it attacked. It growled and pathetically tried to get up to attack. Must've been dehydrated. I took out a bottle of cold, purified water and opened the top. No sense leaving this thing to die out here. And I had packed extra water, so I wasn't losing much. I put the opening of the bottle to the end of the creature's snout and, feeling the cold water drip into it's mouth, it raised it's head to drink in the rest of the water. After a couple of minutes, it got up. It stared at me for a moment, as if trying to figure out what I was, then turned and ran to some distant mountains.
Finally, I saw the vault's door in the distance. But something else caught my eye. I saw a ragged, old tent in the distance and a couple of chairs around some rocks. Was there someone living out here?
The camped looked derelict. The two beds in the tent were extremely dusty, the wooden chairs were falling apart and the fabric of the tent was worn, as if it had been standing for years. Wait, two beds? I looked around me. Surely enough, I found a cliff that simply dropped. I knew what this place was. To confirm, I looked over the edge, and there it was. The decayed and somewhat skeletal remains of Roger. If I still were as emotionally unstable as I was the two years ago when we used this camp after escaping the vault, I'd've fell over sobbing. But, I did have an almost painful feeling of nostalgia. This was going to be harder than I had thought.
I arrived at the entrance of the vault and punched in the code. 'Koleidoscope.' The vault door opened as dramatically as it always does. Still, I felt at home for the first time in I don't know how long.
I went to my own living quarters, pausing for a moment to look down at Fetly. The vault had preserved his body. I went into my bedroom. Everything was exactly the same. Bed in the corner. White walls. Picture of my Mother, Father and me on the bedside table. I couldn't look at it. Honestly, I felt ashamed. My Mother had always been the church type, so she would hate to see that I've broken one of her 'Commandments'. Even so, she would ask me to pray for forgiveness with her. And still love me. Crazy religous types. But, I was doing something now to compensate for the murder. No one else will die by my hand.
I made off for the vault armouries. The C4 was likely there. What I didn't expect when I got there however, was it to be locked. And the card key was likely on... one of the other three. So, I turned to go to the common room. I was absolutly dreading this. I didn't think I needed to go in there. But, I guess if you wanna be the hero, you gotta go through some things you don't want to.
When I got there, the door was closed. I was glad too. I didn't have to deal with a looking at it a moment longer. My heart seemed to be attempting to pound it's way out of my chest with how it was beating. So, I opened the door and went in.
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(I would of course give you a credit) 
:goodjob: 
And...Where are my atoms? <_< 
